Re: KIA Really Captured & Executed

Date: May 28, 2004

"Captured soldier killed after ambush

Donald Walters was in a convoy with Jessica Lynch, held by fedayeen and shot in the back.

By Andrew Kramer, The Associated Press

Portland, Ore. — A soldier initially listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday.

More than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush, the military released new details to the family of Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem, Ore.

Walters "was held separately from his fellow soldiers and killed while in custody," according to a release from the National Guard.

"He was executed — shot twice in the back," Guard spokesman Maj. Arnold Strong said in an interview Thursday. "An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital."

The family was told of the new details.

Walters' fate drew attention because the details of his actions remarkably resemble a story circulated in the media, based on anonymous sources, describing how Lynch had fought until her ammunition ran out.

After her rescue, Lynch, of Palestine, W.Va., said she did not fire a shot.

An Army report released last summer on the ambush of the 507th Army Maintenance Company said that Walters, 33, likely died in the fighting that left 10 other soldiers dead."